generalspeaking

Saturday, August 03, 2019

Self-Obsession as a Fine Art

"I have no desire to talk about Epstein right now."
"The stuff I'm reading about him in the papers is pretty disturbing and goes way beyond what I thought his misdoings and kinks were."
"Yech!"
Ben Goertzel, vice-chairman, Humanity Plus

"Everyone speculated about whether these scientists were more interested in his views or more interested in his money."
Alan M. Dershowitz, professor emeritus of law, Harvard

"President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York."

"In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation."

Clinton spokesperson

Jeffrey Epstein Manhattan Townhouse

"He has a mural on the terrace, the whole length of the building, of a prison yard with barbed wire and guard towers."

"The inmates are out exercising, and he pointed to one and said, ‘That’s me. That’s to remind myself that I could go back there."

R. Couri Hay, a publicist

He's back there. The wealthy financier accused of sex trafficking of underage girls. A man who moved in very elite, socially elevated, politically powerful circles. A friend and acquaintance of Bill Clinton, of Donald Trump for starters. A relationship with Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth's youngest son. But it would seem he particularly cultivated well-known scientists, leaders in their fields of scientific discovery. He had his own pet theories and they mostly revolved around genetic engineering.

To say this man was an oddball is to minimize understatement. He aspired to scatter his personal DNA as far as he could, no doubt in the belief that he was vastly superior in intellect to most others of his ilk, and that it would improve humankind greatly to have his genetic endowments liberally spread about. He even went so far as to confide to some of the scientists who attended his galas of his future plans.

He was interested in what is known as transhumanism; improving the human population through technologies such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. Nazi Germany was also heavily invested in eugenics and we know the result of that; first they would rid the world of the pestilence of Jews, then the heroic Teutonic Aryan strain of humanity would conquer the world, enslaving lesser humans and the thousand-year Reich would commence.

The man gained great wealth and used it to impress and to influence political leaders and academics of acclaim to his side. He surrounded himself by an elite scientific community, using his wealth to fund projects, ingratiating himself with prominent scientists, even Nobel Laureates. One can be a brilliant intellectual, it would seem, and still be impressed by the power of lucre, allowing oneself to become a person-judging simpleton in the process.

Even Stephen Hawking, Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks and many others too numerous in their gilded acclaim to overlook, attended his salon. Financing pet projects goes a long way to persuading people you're worthwhile, even if, as a decent human being you are not, by the evidence available. The dinner parties at his Manhattan residence saw expensive wines freely flowing for the guests while the host abstained.

He helped finance Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics with a $6.5 million donation, and that's impressive. He set up conferences in the U.S.Virgin Islands, flying guests to his private island. On one occasion a submarine brought his guests to one of the conferences held there, including Stephen Hawking; discernment of character obviously set aside, with his eyes perpetually turned to the skies.

Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker attended one of those salons held by a man whom Pinker described later as an "intellectual imposter". "He would abruptly change the subject, ADD-style, dismiss an observation with an adolescent wise-crack." Evidently Professor Pinker had his number, which failed to impress many of his colleagues who viewed Epstein as brilliant.

His New Mexico ranch, scientist-friends of Epstein were informed by him, was to be a base where women would give birth to his babies. His goal, it appears, was to have twenty women at a time impregnated at the 33,000 square-foot Zorro Ranch outside Santa Fe so his dream of his genes dominating a proportion of the world order might commence....